“No more in this country,” said Big George. “I’m through with it. Too condemned dangerous. We don’t need Harmon. We got thirty thousand dollars last night. Fifteen won’t split far. I ain’t afraid of Harmon. Drink up.”
“I’m scared,” said Eddy. “It’s like Oofty says. We got Pete’s share now. Let’s be square with Harmon. Harmon’s squirrely in the skull about huntin’ men. That ain’t no lie about why he thunk up this false trail. He told me once, ‘Eddy, you ever git hungry?’ And I said, ‘Hell, yes.’ ‘You know how it kind of gnaws you?’ he says. ‘Sure,’ I says, with no idea what he was talkin’ about. ‘That’s the way it is with me sometimes,’ he says. ‘Eat,’ I says, bein’ practical. ‘I ain’t talkin’ about food, Eddy,’ he says. Harmon made us turn that young puncher loose just so he could have the fun of killin’ him. Wasn’t no other sense to it.”
“Well, let him have that for his pay,” said Big George.
“That’s all right for you that can throw lead like you—You hear something?” Oofty got up.
Zeke had made no sound. But one of the staked horses had overturned a wash pan some gold miner had left in the creek.
Big George came outside with his gun cocked, swiftly sidestepped from the light of the door and stood still, listening. The horse overturned the pan again and Big George uncocked his gun and went in.
“Give me a drink,” he said, kicking the door shut.
Stepping out from the shadow of the wall, Zeke began to breathe again. He moved to get around back of the building and stumbled on some riding equipment. The noise passed without notice from within and Zeke was about to move on when his shin struck the stock of a rifle still in its boot. It was a Winchester.
Some of Zeke’s strength came back. He drew the rifle forth and fingered it for its load. The magazine was full and ten extra cartridges were in loops on the side of the boot.
He did not know immediately what he would do with it. Coldblooded murder was not in his line. And yet . . .
They continued their drinking in the hut and began to wrangle once more about the split. Big George was so heated that he offered to pay Oofty and Eddy their shares but they would not be a party to defection. It would cause disaster to fall on them too certainly. Big George then offered them the larger part of the cut and they, drunker, became abusive.
Zeke did not know who struck the first blow. There was a crash and the light went out and then a man came stumbling outside swearing while furniture broke within. A moment later Zeke had made up his mind. He stepped to the door and fired blindly into the tumult. There was a scream. Zeke threw himself along the base of the house.
Three more shots sounded and Big George, raving and cursing, came outside, shooting at anything which moved.
Two shots came from the door and Big George dropped to one knee and shot at the flame. Oofty folded up and began to cough, dry and hard. Somebody was running away in the darkness and Big George lurched after him.
“Come back with that pouch!” shouted Big George.
A shot came back at him and Big George returned it and kept on going. The sound of a scuffle came from the direction of the river and grew distant. And then there was a scream, a long, dwindling yell which was to haunt Zeke through his days.
Somebody came back from the direction of the river. It was not Big George.
“Oofty!” he called. It was Eddy. Oofty was coughing, dry and hard.
“He went over the edge with it!” said Eddy in a scared voice. “I was goin’ to take it back to Harmon and he went over the edge with it. It’s gone in the canyon. We got to ride and fast. Harmon won’t never believe us!”
Oofty kept coughing, growing weaker.
A footstep sounded inside the door. “You condemned dog,” said Bill in a cold, emotionless voice. “You’ve done for us all!” And he fired straight into Eddy’s chest.
Bill walked out to the horses and began to saddle one. He came back and got a pair of canteens, the gunnysack which contained their food and an extra rifle. He mounted up and quirted away from there.
Oofty was not coughing.
Zeke lay there for a long time, listening for Eddy or Mike to move. The half-light before dawn came and fell on the dew-wet face of Eddy, staring sightlessly upwards.
Zeke found Mike inside, not very pretty. Zeke took the remaining supplies outside and put them in a saddlebag. He filled up the canteens at a spring.
After he had saddled, despite his haste to get away, he went to the edge of the canyon rim and looked down at the water. It was a straight drop but it ended in a beach. The body of Big George was lying there small and crumpled two hundred feet down.
Zeke found toeholds the cabin’s builder had cut in the cliff and went down along the side of the silvery rivulet which dropped in small falls from the spring above. He looked up and down the beach and behind rocks. If the pouch had been there he would have seen it. It was not.
He stood for a little while looking at the river. It was deep and angry and red and went into a gorge just below which made it steeply waved and boiling. The pouch, he knew, would never be found.
He did not know how tired he was until he tried to climb the cliff once more. It took him a long time to reach the top and when he got there he lay face downward in the wet grass. How many hours had it been since he slept?
He was to know many more.
He was in the act of mounting when the bullet took him in the leg. He whirled to see Les Harmon, a hundred yards down the rim, coming fast, hungry eyes above a lathered horse.
Zeke made it up. He jabbed spur and his horse leaped eastward and away from Harmon. Zeke plied quirt and rode low. Bullets smacked into trees and showered him with needles as he raced.
His horse was fresh. He had water. Harmon would have to stop and change mounts. Zeke rode.
That had been nine months ago, nine months of jumping at sharp sounds in the night, of waking up to hear Oofty coughing dry and hard again, seeing Harmon’s eyes.
And there was Harmon’s horse before the Golden Horn while Harmon was inside. And between the sight and Zeke drifted the haze of remembrance. Zeke put down the gun rag. He was beginning to shake. He knew what the kill-hungry eyes looked like.
Les Harmon stood for a moment at the Golden Horn’s swinging doors and a sleepy Mexican pointed out the hardware store. Les Harmon nodded briefly and came down the steps to walk through the white, dry dust. He was slow, casual, certain, tasting the flavor of it.
Zeke opened the breech of the buffalo gun and started to put in a shell. It was the wrong caliber. He fumbled for the box and tore it getting a .50 cartridge out. He thrust it into the foul breech of the weapon and had just closed it when Harmon was standing in the door, gun in his hand, star on his chest.
“Hello, Tomlin!”
The hot afternoon was cold. The buffalo gun lay unraised on the counter. Zeke tried to speak, cleared his throat and tried again.
“What do you want?”
Harmon juggled the gun in his hand and spun it, bringing it up center on Zeke’s chest. His eyes were cold, cold and gray white. They looked hungry.
“I think you got some information for me, Tomlin.”
“I . . . I haven’t got anything from you. For you.”
“Now, it’s funny, but I think you have. Tomlin, there’s thirty thousand dollars that you know about.”
“It went over the rim with Big George.”
Harmon looked his contempt. He gazed around the shop. “Nobody here, that’s convenient.”
Zeke tried to think.
“Now I wouldn’t try anything foolish,” said Harmon. “I can shoot before you can begin to move that gun. What did you do with the thirty thousand, Tomlin?”
Zeke licked dry lips. Harmon’s eyes were like a snake’s, hypnotic. They were hungry. “You ever find the last man of that gang?”
“Never looked,” said Harmon.
“How . . . how’d you find me?”
“Drummer. Said somebody way down
here was askin’ for me. Described you. That simple. But it took a long time, Tomlin. A long time. I got tired waitin’. Awful tired, Tomlin. Where’s the money?”
“It went over the rim with Big George!”
“Now Tomlin, you’re bein’ foolish, boy. You’re a stranger in this town. Mex said so. You don’t mix much—a little poker. You’re a stranger. They don’t know nothin’ about you. Me, I’m sheriff. You resisted arrest, that’s all. Formalities ain’t too strict. It’s been a long hunt, Tomlin. An awful long hunt.”
Zeke knew he was right. But he stopped shaking. This was it. If he shot it out here, even then they’d kill him for murdering a lawman. They’d call it that. But this was it. The whole haze of memory and the throbbing of his leg took him and passed over him and he was cold but calm.
“Big George went into the river with it, Harmon. You ride out of here.”
Harmon’s expression didn’t change. He took a step nearer.
Suddenly Zeke ducked and swung the gun. A lamp to the right of his head spattered in silver fragments. The store was full of sound. The unshouldered buffalo gun sprang out of Zeke’s grasp and split its butt on the wall.
There was silence in the room. One of Zeke’s fingers was bleeding where the recoil of the .50 caliber had torn it. He fumbled for a second cartridge in the box and through the glass of the case saw Harmon’s boot.
There was not much left of the lawman’s chest. His left breast was a hole where a mushroom slug as big as a thumb had gone.
Les Harmon was dead.
Zeke stood up. They would hang him now. Hang him sure. Hang him because he was a stranger to them.
The proprietor came dazedly in from the rooms in the rear where he had been taking his siesta. The front doors burst inwards and Tom Brennerman was there, star big and bright.
They would take him away now, thought Zeke.
Tom Brennerman looked at Harmon and rolled the face over with the toe of his boot. He looked for a little while and then turned to thrust back interested citizenry.
“You all right, Zeke?” said Tom Brennerman.
Zeke looked amazedly at the marshal.
“You sure drilled him clean, Zeke,” said McTavish who owned the store. “And you give him the first shot!”
“You all right, Zeke?” demanded the marshal again.
“Yeah. Yeah, I’m all right,” said Zeke.
“You better go lie down, you’re that white,” said Brennerman. “Make him lie down and give him a drink, McTavish. Them buffaler guns kick a man somethin’ fierce.”
“You come on and lie down and have a drink,” said McTavish.
Somebody in the street said, “Zeke all right?”
A curious voice piped up from the door, “Who was it shot at Zeke?”
Brennerman glanced at the body which two men were gathering up. He shrugged. Bending over, he looked through the dead man’s pockets. There was nothing to identify him.
“Dunno,” said Brennerman. “Anybody can wear a star. That don’t necessarily make him a sheriff. Nothin’ here to say who he is. Looks like we’ll never know. Just some stranger in town, lookin’ for trouble.”
Zeke permitted himself to be led into the back room. McTavish made him comfortable on a bed and beamed at him.
“That . . . that dead man,” began Zeke, “is a lawman . . .”
“Och! Zeke boy, we have had others try to pull that trick on us before. They come in here with a badge and try to settle old feuds in the name of the law of some faraway town. We’re not so innocent. You heard what Brennerman said, didn’t you? ‘Just a stranger in town.’ We know you; we don’t know him.”
Zeke smiled and a deep, beautiful peace began to settle down over him. McTavish patted his shoulder and went to find a refill from his private stock.
Zeke knew the term “stranger” no longer applied to him.
Story Preview
NOW that you’ve just ventured through some of the captivating tales in the Stories from the Golden Age collection by L. Ron Hubbard, turn the page and enjoy a preview of Shadows from Boot Hill. Join outlaw Brazos as he races to take a “hit job” from Whisper Monahan. But things soon take a supernatural spin when Brazos acquires another shadow after killing a witch doctor, who, with his last breath, swears a deadly curse upon his soul.
Shadows from Boot Hill
ON a hot afternoon in August, Brazos chased his shadow toward Los Hornos at a speed which indicated that all the devils from hell and maybe even some angels were hot upon him. He fled with more fury than fright, for it seemed to him that the murder of a banker ought to be considered in the light of public good. Too, he nursed a feeling of grievance, for the law had been so swift and determined that he had not even had time to collect the five hundred dollars in double eagles which was to have been his pay for the job. The buckskin money belt was damp and light beneath his buckskin shirt, just as both Peacemaker and Martini-Henry were empty at belt and saddle side.
And this was a hell of a country to try to get lost in.
And Los Hornos, ahead, was about as safe a sanctuary as a barrel of sidewinders.
Brazos swore at his luck, swore at his horse and swore at his shadow. He cursed the sage, he cursed the dust and he spat into the unoffending eye of a horned toad by the way. If he had good sense he’d larrup south to the border, but if he had better sense he’d crack a Wells Fargo safe before he went—for visitors in the land of the dons were welcome in proportion to their purses. It was like Brazos to barely keep a posse’s dust under the rim of the world behind and consider ways of replenishing his exchequer.
Los Hornos came writhing into sight amid its heat waves, moving slowly up in mirage as though somebody had a jack under the town and then dropping suddenly, as though the jack had slipped. Behind it, red sandstone buttes appeared ready for the frying pan; all around it, dusty sage drooped in drab boredom; in it, the inhabitants were following a theory that a fiery sun without was best combated by firewater within.
Brazos looked over his shoulder in anxiety. The posse thought he would have to head for Los Hornos, and the posse had a couple of Apache trackers along to confirm its guess. And this horse, which he had stolen from a sheepherder (which didn’t make it theft) wouldn’t last another league. He had to stop in Los Hornos or be stopped. His quirt fell and the weary mustang sped along.
Who did he know in Los Hornos? Only one man. Whisper Monahan. A slight shudder of premonition went over Brazos and, because he believed in premonition, he did not take the symptom in a good light. The last time he’d worked for Whisper Monahan they had not parted the best of friends. But a posse is a posse, and a half friend is better than an enemy with gun smoke in his fist, and so Brazos went streaming into the main street of Los Hornos.
A couple of Indian dogs leaped out of slumber and from under his hoofs with dismal yelps. A loafer in the shade of the store porch went right on sleeping. There was a sign, “Star Livery Stable, Whisper Monahan, Prop.” Brazos swung the horse, and the moist warmth and dimness of the stable swallowed him.
In the office, Whisper Monahan and a hostler named Henry looked languidly at the opening door and then came fully awake. For a few seconds the silence was very deep. Whisper Monahan was built close to the ground, and not all the sun in the Southwest could have turned his pasty pallor into anything but a pasty pallor. But, awkward and scared as he seemed, he always got what he wanted, no matter the methods he had to use.
Brazos was inclined to be truculent. He wasn’t very tall, but he wasn’t very thick, either, and when men first looked at him they thought him a forceful and powerful individual. His mouth was almost at forty-five degrees with his face, and his eyes proclaimed a dislike for the world. And now, with his buckskin stained and his flat Texas hat gray with dust and his much-used—if at present empty—gun at his side, he looked ready to take on a regiment, having just finished off a brigade.
“Hello, Brazos.”
“Hello, Whisper.”
“You come far
and fast, Brazos.”
“I come with half the citizens of Tulos on my heels.”
“Well, now, Brazos, that’s too bad. What happened?”
“I killed a gent that needed killing, and I didn’t even collect the double eagles. This country is goin’ to hell for keeps.”
“Yeah. The law is gettin’ the upper hand, worse luck.”
“You gotta cover me, Whisper.”
“Why?”
“Because I said you gotta.”
Whisper grinned suddenly inside himself. “That’s too bad, Brazos. But I reckon you just better keep riding.”
“My hoss is half dead and I ain’t goin’ to keep riding.”
“Then you better start walking, Brazos.”
“You can’t do this to me!”
“You ain’t got a cartridge left in your belt and most likely none in your gun. You better be goin’, Brazos, afore them fellers come streaking in here and string you up.”
“You can’t do this to me!”
“I’m doin’ it, Brazos.”
“But they’ll kill me!”
Whisper was laughing inside himself now, though he looked very contrite and sorrowful. Brazos wore a silver cross on a silver chain around his neck, and when Brazos got pushed to it he generally fingered the cross in hopes it would bring him luck. Whisper saw him doing it, and knew that he had his man.
“Too bad,” said Whisper. “You better be goin’ afore they get here.”
“Now look, Whisper! Ain’t you always been my friend?”
“I’ve hired you once in a while,” said Whisper.
“Well, hire me again! I need help, and I need it bad!”
“Hire you? Shucks, I haven’t got anything for you to do.”
“Sure you have, Whisper!”
Whisper was hard put to keep looking thoughtful. Finally he scrubbed at his bald head and spoke doubtfully. “Well—I could get you to kill Scotty Brant for me, but you wouldn’t do that.”
“Sure I would, Whisper! You gotta help me.”